New Managers October 2012

Servicers' Spot - Butterfield Fulcrum: aim for the institutional-grade platform

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Butterfield Fulcrum: aim for the institutional-grade platform

Phil Niles

"Investors in the last few years have been looking for very reputable service providers when looking into funds; prime brokers, auditors, lawyers, fund administrators," Phil Niles, director at Butterfield Fulcrum, a fund administrator, told Opalesque. "Gone are the days when you could use just any old firms and check the box. Investors do a lot more due diligence now. So make sure you have all those service providers in place."

Butterfield Fulcrum is a full-service hedge fund provider that uses best in class technology and leverages it across a very diversified global client base, across all manner of funds and strategies including hard-to-value and complex fund structures. BF has offices strategically located all over the world with a 24/7 service providing capacity and employs about 500 employees.

Investors are also looking for a much more institutional-grade platform, Niles adds.

Unfortunately, investment managers often look for the cheapest possible solution (service providers and technology).

And while this might make sense for a small investment manager, Butterfield Fulcrum cautions then on that. For the most part investors are actually willing to pay a premium for that institutional grade platform, he says. And the cheapest solutions may or may not be the best choice.

"I always encourage managers to think of the total cost of ownership of particular solution and also to think about what it says about their firm. If you think of the audit world, a KPMG or an E&Y are definitely going to cost more than auditor XYZ that nobody has ever heard of, but it also signals......................

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This article was published in Opalesque's New Managers a top-down monthly analysis, news and research publication on the global emerging manager space.